Once upon a time, things were made to serve a purpose. Consider the light bulb, the compass, and the cardiac pacemaker. No doubt necessity was once the mother of invention.
Fast forward to the present. What's happened? It seems that everywhere I go, I'm bombarded with completely useless and unnecessary stuff. Yesterday, someone tried to sell me a 14-inch pencil--the "Jumbo Jotter." I'll admit I was tempted, and I imagined myself sauntering into Monday's 3:00 meeting, only to whip out my enormous pencil and start taking notes like it was just another day at the office. My colleagues would laugh, we'd all have a good chuckle, but then some persnickety associate would point out the obvious: I had wasted $9.95 and a tree in Paraguay for a D-list joke.
The problem with useless products is threefold. First, they squander natural resources (energy, raw materials, mineral deposits and infomercial star Anthony Sullivan's precious time). Secondly, they clog up landfills and, thirdly, they throw us into a Samsara-like cycle of never ending consumption.
Take for example, the Toastmaster Electric Can Opener - Model TCO2 (white). Yes, of course this gadget could be a godsend for the arthritic and handicapped. For the rest of us, however, it's just another gateway to misery.
1. Lift blade assembly.
2. Place can against positioning bar guide and metal wheel.
3. Press button until can opening process is complete.
We press the button and eat our spam with little worry. Then the tragedy sets in. A few weeks go by and a rubber tire forms around our recently slim midsection. A double chin appears. Is that arm flab? Manual can opening burns calories. The lack of physical activity has atrophied our muscles.
Hence useless gadget number two: the Sauna Belt (note this product was recently recalled for safety reasons). This girdle of a device claims to heat the belly, increasing body temperature, so to literally melt away excess pounds. As it happens, the only thing the Sauna Belt is really good for is repelling members of the opposite sex and scorching its clientele. Burned and fat, what are we to do? Sharper Image's personal air conditioner provides comfort in times of distress. Just place the battery operated metal collar around your neck and you'll enjoy the blissful blow of cool air and water vapor on your face.
My point is that it never ends. As we're buying up all of this "stuff," we're wasting money, polluting the earth and adding another piece of junk to our already overcrowded lives. To offset the havoc we purchase yet another useless product and on and on it goes.
Yes, it's a cruel cruel world out there. And if for a moment a gigantic pencil, fuzzy toilet seat cover or fat burning belt will make it seem all the more bearable, then purchase away. But at least try to buy used.
Behold the gallery . . .
Top Ten Most Useless and Unnecessary Pieces of Crap
The Auto-Adjusting Wrench
Put the monkey wrench to shame. No need to sweat and waste your energy spinning the thumbwheel manually. Instead, just press "power" and the Auto-Adjusting Wrench will mechanically close in on that nut like a python closing in on its prey. Of course, once adjusted you'll have to turn the wrench yourself, but at least you got the hard part out of the way.
The Banana Holder
Not to be confused with the "Banana Hammock." Seriously though, what happens when you are down to one banana? How does that Banana stay safe?
Oh, of course! Silly me! Just put it in a Plastic Banana Guard.
The Plastic Banana Guard
The Battery-Powered Spinning Bottle
Jeez, kids today! They have it so easy. Back in my day (insert rambling aged voice here) we actually had to rotate the bottle. Can you imagine? Whirling it by hand to facilitate a painful make-out session or seven minutes in heaven. What torture. We really were living in the dark ages.
The Fuzzy Toilet Seat Cover
Aside from serving absolutely no purpose whatsoever, the furry toilet seat is gross. I mean, why on earth would I want a carpet on my toilet? I don't want to get into graphic detail here, but stray tagnuts and winnets . . . before you know it you've got a dingleberry garden.
The Paper Weight
If by divine intervention a gust of wind blazeth through your windowless cubicle, be sure to protect thy papers with a 4 ounce paperweight.
The Mechanized Egg Cracker
The line of crap destined to fill up your kitchen is seemingly endless. Exhibit A: the egg cracker, a plastic device with which you . . . crack an egg. God forbid we need to knock on the side of a bowl. How, one wonders, has humanity ever survived without a mechanized egg cracker?
The Baby Wipes Warmer
The baby industry capitalizes on the deepest fears of new and nervous parents. Certainly your baby will be uncomfortable, unhappy and will hate you for life if you do not wipe its bum with a warm wipey. This particular model ensures that it won't dehydrate the wipes, "as leading wipe warmers tend to do." You know what else won't dry out the wipes? Not using a wipe warmer.
The Melon Wedger
Need I point out that most kitchens have a knife?
The Leaf Blower
What good is a rake when you can happily puff leaves into your neighbor's yard with a gas powered leaf blower? Yeah, blowers hemorrhage fossil fuel, but then again nothing's more satisfying than chasing down that last recalcitrant leaf and blasting it into oblivion.
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
I love the "crapola" line. Thought I was the only one who used it.
This is an excellent post. I moved within the last two years and I had accumulated so much crap (nothing on this list, thank god), that I spent as much time getting rid of things as packing them! And don't get me started on my In-Laws. I undertand that they were children of the Depression, and, as a result, had a hard time throwing things away, but when they died, the stuff they had accumulated was beyond belief. It took my husband three years to go through everything. (I gave up after the first year and begged him to get one of those companies that comes in and carts the stuff away for you, but my husband couldn't do it.) I've come to realize that when people don't like their kids, instead cutting them out of the will and leaving them nothing, they should leave them everything. That is the true curse!
Your leaf blower inclusion brings to mind all the people across America who ride motor-cross bikes, snowmobiles and jet-skis for "recreation". While I'll concede that there are rare legitimate uses as transportation under some conditions, the overwhelming preponderance of these machines are used to devour fossil fuel for no other reason than to give the consumer a thrill. Among the obvious side-effects, we terrorize wildlife, pollute the planet, generate ungodly noise and accelerate erosion in the wild.
With as many deaths as we've caused and suffered in Iraq over oil, you'd think a light bulb would go off in our heads.
8
Excellent report on a subject way too neglected. It is so satisfying to read a witty, insightful, well-documented piece on how we are drowning the planet in junk. Thank you, Olivia Z. You've opened a topic that is at the root of our environmental degradation. Take, for example, the floating "island" of plastic flotsam in the northwest Pacific Ocean; it is the size of the state of Texas! All these doo-dads are tempting because they're so cheap. That is because they are made in China. I recently looked through the "souvenirs" at the the Santa Fe airport; they included all sorts of t-shirts with Navajo motifs, Kokopeli mugs, dreamcatchers, roadrunner playing cards, etc. Every single item was made in China. So much for genuine souvenirs and local crafts. Bravo, Ms. Zaleski, for including leaf-blowers. They are responsible for up to 18% of urban air pollution, a nightmare and a cause for asthma in children; they destroy the fertile underbrush layer of leaf mold and debris inhabited by earthworms, seedlings, fungi, small insects, organisms, and larvae, the life support of songbirds and other animals in the foodchain. People are way too "anal" about their driveways. Bring back the broom. Thanks so much for raising these important issues. I love your lively, droll style. Your recommendation to "buy it used" is a key solution.
Does the banana keeper or the banana hanger actually work? Occasionally I have to throw out a banana or that gets too mushy. I'd like to have the bananas last a bit longer. I'm not sure what animals might eat mushy bananas. Perhaps the zoo could use them.
The wipes warmer is actually smart. You don't want your baby to develop an aversion to the diaper change with repeated ice cold wipes to the sensitives. Our family loves ours.
Did you ever consider holding the wipes in your hands for a few seconds? I used to do that for my kids when they were babies, and it worked without the cost of electricity, batteries, or however the thing is powered. And, now that I don't need it any more, I don't have something else to get rid of.
I'll vote for less smart and more Indulgent. I know of no baby, including ours, who has aversions to diaper changes from wipes that aren't warmed just so.
pretty smug mocking devices that help the handicapped. shame on you. you shd have the experience trying to live independently as a handicapped individual and then cry about missing out 'burning calories' opening a can manually. Is this funny, clever, relevant? You are a small minded jerk.
Dear EvaDee,
Under absolutely NO circumstance was I mocking the handicapped. I was simply noting that specific items are necessary for the handicap, but unnecessary for the non-handicapped.
I am making fun of the devices as they are used by the non-handicapped. As I stated in my post, they make perfect sense if you are in need of assistance.
Please don't confuse my light hearted tone with a cavalier and insensitive view of the handicapped.
Thank you for your comment,
Olivia Zaleski
The leaf blower shoudnt be on this list. There are certain jobs that cannot be done, or take 10 times longer with a rake or broom.
My father owns a cleaning business and a few times a week he will need me to help him out. It would take about 3 hours to remove all the leaves/rubbish from 3 carparks or the outside of an apartment block using a rake. With a leaf blower it will take about 20-30 minutes. Now that doesnt seem useless does it? I saw a comment of yours saying 1 hour of blowing uses the same amount of petrol as a car driving 100 miles. That's strange seeing as i only have to fill up once throughout the day. The petrol tank is 1 litre.
So maybe using a leaf blower around your backyard is just plain lazy, but you didnt think about the people who NEED these for their job.
Maybe for a business. But the point is we have all this crap in our homes and convince ourselves we need it. By buying it, we promote the wasteful creation of more crap. As a consequence, we are fatter, lazier, and more reliant on gizmo's that burn oil, pollute, all for something terribly inconsequential like some leaves. We don't even get the peace of mind and energy that comes from doing physical chores. But perhaps we're so lazy and removed from life now that we don't even know what we're missing, and in that world a personal leaf blower makes sense.
yes, but the reason why the leafblower should be on the list is that it doesn't actually solve the problem---it simply shifts it elsewhere for someone else to take care. Now that's useless crapola.
Wow, it's kind of funny how each commenter pretty much agrees this is indeed a load of useless crapola, but takes exception to something different on the list. Scanning the most recent page of comments, it seems only four of the items are universally scorned:
-the battery-powered spinning bottle
-the furry toilet seat cover (though plenty of objections to level of detail used to describe it)
-the mechanized egg cracker
-the melon wedger
So, I challenge you now: will anyone stand up for these disgraced items? Who will champion the melon wedger, defend the honor of the mechanized egg cracker?
Hey, one persons crap...
assuming the melon wedger works and is well made, I see a restaurant wanting one for busy Sunday brunch.
The melon wedger has stirred my curiosity since it takes care of the peeling as well as the wedging. Even with a good deal of skill in the kitchen, getting the peel off melons has been one of the only food prep actions that has drawn a drop or two of blood from me in many, many a year. If this item were efficient (most such kitchen gadgets are not), I could imagine considering it since my family consumes a lot of cantoloupe.
I know it can be whimsical to critique the "crap" of others, but I do hope that all here take a moment to think about what they themselves can do. Yes, it's silly to have that melon wedger, but the volume of material in it seems less than the volume of material in a pair of sneakers and, looking on the feet of so many I know, many seem to have a few more pairs of shoes than "needed." Yes, the lawn blower/sucker may be a questionable item, but so are lawns, quite frankly. Should we really have more of a lawn than can be cut with a manual mower? Have you ripped out your lawns and replaced them with more environmentally-friendly gardens? I'm just sayin' Start by eliminating the silly "crapola" from your lives, but don't stop there. Look deeper.
Wow. The Plastic Banana Guard isn't phallic at all.
/end sarcasm
You forgot one: Hillary Clinton
I want all of this stuff
I'm a fan of this blogger, so I just looked at some of the comments below, which are many. Interesting. Why have so many people decided to click on to a story about crapola?? I suppose we're bored with the sex stories, the campaign. But what is most amazing is the crapola story got more visitors on its first day than the story about 4000 war dead in Iraq. This interest in crapola is all good and this blogger gets people to think how we fan defy the crapola-industrial complex. Rage, rage against being smothered in other people's plastic crapola. Rage, rage against the dawing of the dark night of a world gone dark because of too much stupid crapola. But how sad, how dire, that people aren't so interested in the war and defying the military-industrial complex. Not that I am a complete pacifist, as what are you gonna' do but fight back when Hitlerism returns, or some such. But again how said, that we are just plain exhausted by the apparent sameness of the Irag war dragging on and on. All those soldiers over there fighting to allow us to live free with more and more and more plastic( made of OIL remember) crapola.
Ok, Gross - too much detail on the toilet seat covers. Re leaf blowers, agreed, another example of "what's good for business" is A-OK.
Re working with desert landscape - can't imagine a more fatuous example of why leaf blowers are important.
Ditto,you told me more then I really wanted to know about misfires on the tiolet seat.
i use the banana hanger and the wipes warmer. my daughter can scream so loud your ears will bleed, but she screams significantly less when i'm not touching her ass with a freezing cold wipe. as for the banana hanger, i have limited kitchen space, and if i put bananas in my fruit basket i'm just about out of space. what should i do with the other fresh fruits, just stop eating them?
The asswipes are freezing? Bring them indoors. Perhaps the kid just wants attention from a parent spending time on a blog.
Don't the other fruits get jealous of the bananas having their own luxurious accommodations?
Some of us actually survived parenting a child who could scream. Try ear plugs. Either put them in your ears or shove them down the kid's throat.
useless item: chiquita products
i hope that banana is not Chiquita brand. i live in a "company town" of Diablo Chiquita and i would not buy or even EAT a Chiquita product if i were starving... those bananas are fertilised on the bodies and blood of the workers. and i mean that literally. ban the banana (unless it's organic AND unionised)
una+
Non-organic bananas are so heavily sprayed that apparently their peels will kill your worms if you try to compost them in your worm bin. That's pretty gross. I've also heard that the spraying causes workers at banana plantations to go sterile (do you know this to be true, una/ammaoonagh?).
Of course, the problem is that all banana plants are clones, so there's no genetic diversity, and very little resistance to disease and pests. At least, that's the biological part of the problem.
I used to take comfort in eating organic bananas, until I heard a banana expert on the radio explain that organic bananas need to be grown at high altitudes, and there is only enough land of this kind to meet a very small portion of overall banana demand (and I don't even want to think about it competing for land with habitat... or the added strain of global warming... goodness!). I still eat them, but I take less comfort in it.
HuffPost's Pick
I agree with you on everything except the auto-adjusting wrench. The wrench has been a lifesaver for me. I had a couple of accidents that have made it nearly impossible for me to work an adjustable wrench with one hand; working the little wheel with the thumb on my wrench hand is just not possible anymore.
Grab an auto adjuster and I am back to repairing the stuff around my house and building stuff. I love it.
Consumerism Exposed: LINK: http://www.storyofstuff.com Please visit the site and share with others. See the true cost to the planet of our consumerism. Learn more about the high cost of low prices, why NAFTA was supported by both parties, and participate in teaching others. Huffpost may want to post an article....Hurrah!
Hey, don't blame the people who make this stuff. Blame the people who buy it. A product is only crapola if it doesn't work or you don't use it. Which brings me to my Crapola Hall of Fame:
The bread machine
The shaving lather warmer
The electric knife
Anything from Swarovski
The mini vacuum
George W. Bush
Consumerism Exposed: LINK BELOW
What about a diamond ring for an engagement?
Could not agree more.
I was laughing with you up until the leaf blower - that thing is a huge labor saver, not everyone's back/health is up to a full day of raking and bagging.
Totally. I have about 1/3 acre of maples on my property, all fully-grown and generating a huge carpet of leaves every fall. Our first year, my wife and I raked ... and raked ... and raked. The next year, I bought a blower. 210 MPH! That puppy will move 2-inch diameter chunks of tree branch. Even with the blower, it's about 2 full days of work to move all those leaves off the lawn. (I live on the edge of a ridge, so I just blow them off the bluff. Otherwise, I'd have to rent a drop box to get rid of them.) But at least it's just one of us doing the work. And my back doesn't need medical attention afterward.
Thanks.
mp
One of the best fertilizers available for your maple trees: Maple leaves.
That's what teens who need money are for, or if you can't really afford to hire a teen (but then again, you DID buy a leaf blower!), then trade jobs with a neighbor who presumably CAN rake your lawn. .. or driveway, or whatever else may need raking. (BTW, lawns themselves are fufu crapola.)
We'll use our leaf blowers as we wish. We don't you for anything. FO.
Posted May 30, 2008 | 08:35 AM (EST)